Complex Emotions Over First American Indian Saint

Published: July 24, 2012

FONDA, N.Y. — The last time the Vatican canonized saints from along this stretch of the Mohawk River, it was 1930, and more than 35,000 Catholic pilgrims came to mark the occasion. The Jesuits here constructed a coliseum-size church to hold the crowds, and placed wooden statues of the new saints at the peaks of its stockadelike altar.

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Paul Shenandoah, from the Onondaga Nation, second from left, and Jacob Buck danced at an annual Kateri powwow.

Those saints, three of them, were French Jesuits, tortured and murdered in the 17th century by the Mohawk Indians they were seeking to convert, according to the church. But in a twist of history, this October the Vatican will canonize a fourth saint from the Mohawk Valley: Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman born in 1656, a decade after the missionaries were killed in her village.

This time around, the reaction is more complex, particularly among American Indians. Some are proud, because Kateri was a Mohawk. Some doubt the truthfulness of her story as told by the church. Some hope the canonization will ease tensions between Catholic and traditional American Indians. And some are euphoric that the church is about to name its first American Indian saint, even if they wish it had happened sooner.

“At a time when natives are still treated like third-class citizens, it’s very impressive that the Vatican and the Catholic Church is finally recognizing her,” said Pat Whyland, 67, a Mohawk from Syracuse, who offered a prayer to Kateri, as well as to the water, wind and sun, at the start of a small powwow held at her shrine in Fonda in early July. “Not everyone knows about her,” she added, “but once you become familiar with her, you become very attached to her and her story.”

According to the Jesuits who documented her life, Kateri was born in what is now Auriesville, N.Y., on the southern bank of the Mohawk River, about 40 miles west of Albany. When she was 4, a smallpox epidemic killed her Algonquin Christian mother and Mohawk-warrior father. The disease also badly scarred her face and impaired her eyesight, earning her the name Tekakwitha, which means, “she who bumps into things.” At age 10, after war destroyed her birth village, she moved with her uncle’s family to a long house on the other side of the river.

In contact with missionaries as a teenager, she decided to become a Catholic, despite opposition from her clan and an impending arranged marriage. After she was baptized at age 20, she fled to a Catholic Indian settlement in what is now Canada. There, she worked with the sick, took a vow of perpetual virginity, and began practicing self-mortification, which included praying for hours outdoors, on her knees, during the winter. She became ill, and died at 24.

It was a simple life, marked by devotion. But after her death, Jesuits and others said they saw miraculous signs. The pockmarks on her body disappeared, they said. Prayers seeking her assistance were followed by healing.

In 1880, Catholics began petitioning the Vatican to declare Kateri a saint, and 100 years later, the Vatican certified the first miracle attributed to her intercession. Last year, the Vatican credited her with aiding in the healing of a flesh-eating infection in an American Indian boy in Washington State, the second miracle that was required for canonization.

Some American Indians question the church’s account of Kateri, said Tom Porter, who leads a small traditional community of Mohawks about five miles from where she grew up. Still, when he was asked by the Fonda shrine to speak about Kateri’s Mohawk background, he accepted. “She was raised mostly by our tradition, so her spirituality was mostly of the real old faith,” he said.

According to local residents, miracles occur here, too. Grace Hammons, 72, of Northville, said that after doctors told her she had uterine cancer, she prayed to Kateri and her biopsy came up clear. And Toby Whyland-Rich, 39, said that when he splashed some water from the natural spring dedicated to Kateri in Fonda on an ulcerous sore on his leg, it healed.

“I don’t look at it like she gave up her native beliefs,” he said as he got a Mohawk Bear Clan tattoo in a tent at the powwow. “She added to her faith.”